TriniRealty.com

T&T-based American Life and General Insurance Company Ltd ( Algico) will stop underwriting new property and casualty policies as of May 1, 2010, the company announced yesterday. Algico, which is owned by the American Insurance Group (AIG), was overtaken by the United States government as part of an US$85 billion bailout in September 2008 in a bid to save financial markets and the US economy from collapse during the global economic crisis.

Land availability and not politics dictates the locations of affordable housing, chairman of the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) Jearlean John said Friday, as she dismissed any allegations of ’voter padding’ through that agency. John was responding to murmurs from some quarters that the Government uses housing schemes built by the HDC to pour its supporters into marginal constituencies-particularly in the lead-up to a general election.

She has countered that while the HDC continues to hand over new homes on a daily basis, it definitely has nothing to do with the next national polls, scheduled for May 24. ’There is no sinister objective in the HDC’s distribution of houses,’ John said in a telephone interview Friday.

Government is spending taxpayers’ money on road improvement, says Works and Transport Minister Colm Imbert. Reconstruction of the Macoya Bridge has been completed after it collapsed on November 17, 2008, following heavy rainfall. The commissioning of the new bridge and two overhead gantry signs was held yesterday during a slight shower. Imbert, who delivered the feature address to a small gathering, said through the Programme for Upgrading Roads Efficiency (Pure), his ministry had undertaken 3,638 road improvement projects at an approximate cost of $3.7 billion. “That is what we are spending taxpayers’ money on…road improvement,” Imbert said.